The Four Most Important Choices You Can Make as a Parent

You've taken their homework, their lunch, and even their trombone to them. Kids forget, but don't let them forget their Bible. Thursday, October 7th is Bring Your Bible to School Day across the nation. Encourage your kids to carry their Bible and empower them with Joshua 1-9. Teach them to let God's Word be honored, held, and heard, and never forgotten. Have your voice heard.

Sign up at BringYourBible.org. But it's because you can't fail if you're faithful, because failure is not dependent upon your child's choices or behavior. It's about you walking with them. That's Crystal Payne, and she joins us today on Focus on the Family to share her journey of allowing God's love to transform her parenting.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daley, and I'm John Fuller. John, we've talked to many parenting experts who say to let go and allow your kids to make mistakes, but it's a lot easier said than done, right? In reality, many parents spend their days frustrated, I'm speaking out of my own experience, by their kids' behavior, because I think we tend to own too much of it. It reflects upon us, and that never is good when they're not keeping their room clean and they're not doing the things they need to do.

If you can relate to this, it's worth considering what's at the root of your fear when it comes to your parenting style, and I'm speaking, like I said to myself, Jean and I, we have battled this because we wanted certain perfection out of our boys, and really Jean led the way. She was so good at turning the corner and going, you know what, we've got to love our kids first and foremost, and I guess that is why I'm excited today to talk to our guest. She's written a great book, Love-Centered Parenting, and I always am looking for this kind of content for you to hear, because I think this is at the core of many of the problems we face in Christian families. I would agree, Jim, and we're so glad Crystal Payne is with us. She's known as the Money-Saving Mom, that's the name of her very popular website. Crystal and her husband Jesse have four children, and she's written, as you said, this book, Love-Centered Parenting, the no-fail guide to launching your kids.

And of course, we do have copies of that here at the ministry. Just click the link in the episode notes, or call 1-800, the letter A in the word family. Crystal, welcome back to Focus on the Family. I'm so excited to be back here. I love this topic.

I hope you heard that in the opening. I mean, I've been waiting to talk to somebody, especially a mom, about this, because it just seems to be at the core of so many issues in Christian families, particularly because we have this drive toward living life as perfectly as we can, and then we lay it on our kids to do that as well. And they've got growing pains to go through, right?

Yes. And it's hard. Describe your family.

Let's start there. Before turning toward a love-based parenting style, what did your family look like? I feel like it all started with me, that I had so much stress. I constantly felt like I wasn't doing enough. I was constantly going to bed psychoanalyzing and second-guessing myself. I should have done that. Why did I do that?

Why did I respond like that? And I felt this weight on me, that it was never enough, and that everyone else was doing it so much better than me, and I was just constantly failing my kids. And it was also that weight of my reputation.

I cared so much what other people thought of me as a parent, and it just was constant exhaustion and stress. There was a moment where this kind of became the moment of awareness. I think you were dropping one of your children off at school, and something went down that got your attention. What happened?

Yes. So it was about four years ago, and our kids were going to this little Christian school, and my husband was dropping the three of them off. And the principal met him and said, I need to meet with you and your wife and a specific child after school. And he came home and he told me this, and he's like, this is not good. We just both felt like, we don't know what this is about, but something really bad is about to go down. And we were just kind of trying to think through everything that had happened the last week, and we couldn't come up with, what could this be?

And what happened? So we go into the principal's office, and the principal tells us that our child had done something that had broken the school's code of conduct and was very serious, and that swift action needed to be taken. And we were just really blindsided by the whole thing, because it had just happened the day before.

We thought everything was fine. The day before, it was just a normal day, and our child had really hidden this from us, and then wasn't even willing to, in the principal's office, admit that they had done that. And it took a long time for our child to actually say, no, I did that. And so then we spent the next few weeks really meeting with families and unpacking and trying to figure out, you know, what is going on?

How did we miss this? And finding out that there was so much more than just this one incident. And that's really hard as a parent to feel like you've completely missed something that your child was really struggling with and had been struggling with for months. In fact, we found out that a lot of the other parents had been talking. A lot of them had gone to the principal, and that they had even labeled our child a bully, and we were clueless.

Yeah. You know, I get that because you see one side of your child at home, and you don't totally dial in, and you're just moving along blindly. So I think a lot of parents could relate to that situation.

And, you know, when you get that phone call from a friend saying, hey, you know, my son told me that your son, or what have you, and then you got to deal with that, right? So you ended up, you did get into some therapy for this child. The therapist had some interesting challenges for you, but for you, not necessarily for your child. What was that about?

Yes. So it really spiraled out. Our child, this kind of was the straw that broke the camel's back, because then everything kind of came to the surface, and they became extremely vitriolic, and then their anxiety was through the roof, and then it was depression, and then it turned into suicidal things that they were saying. We ended up in the ER, and it was a really scary time as a parent, and we were finally able to get our child into therapy, and I remember just sitting across from the therapist at that initial meeting. Our child wasn't there, and just saying, if there is anything you can come up with that I can change or do, would you please let me know, because I'm just at a loss.

And a few weeks later, after therapy with our child, the therapist called me back in after she dismissed our child, and she said, I think you're trying so hard to fix your child. What would it look like to just walk with them instead? Huh. That had to be a bit of a shock, right? Well I started paying attention, because at first I was like, fix them? I feel like I'm trying to walk with them. But then I paid attention to my responses, and when something was going wrong, when a child was acting out, when they were arguing or fighting or they'd done something, I would instantly just swoop in and try to fix it. Like I needed to get into sermon mode, we needed to take care of this, we needed to address this. And so much of my time was spent correcting my kids, and very little time was spent actually connecting with them.

Yeah. Yeah, I had a similar experience. I remember taking, each of my sons, I took them on something that Focus does here, Adventures in Fatherhood. And so you're out in the wilderness, you're in a small group of about five or six dads with either their daughter or son, and we're sitting around the campfire one night, and the guide is asking Troy, my youngest, some questions. And I found myself jumping in. I mean, I was, if he didn't answer them quickly enough, you know, I was saying, well, Troy enjoys this, that, or that. And finally he turned to me and just said, why don't you let Troy answer the questions?

And it was like a brick wall had hit me, you know, and it got my attention. And, you know, it's one of the things that I was trying to over-parent in. I was trying to bolster his responses, right?

Give him a little juice, help him with what to think about and say. So I totally get that. And, but that had to be such a serious time for you and your husband and your child.

Yes, it was. And I think for me, it really, I hit rock bottom as a parent and just, I realized what I'm doing is not working and something needs to change. And so when the therapist said that to me, I started just really looking inward and digging into what is the root of this? Why do I feel like I need to be fixing my child? Why am I trying to be my child's savior and Holy Spirit? Why do I think it all depends on me?

This is a really heavy weight to carry. And as I dug into that and started, you know, just really paying attention, I realized it went back to a dysfunctional view of God that I didn't realize how much I was loved by God. And I was parenting so much in order to earn approval from others and earn approval from God. Like I thought if I could just be a good parent, then other people would think well of me. I cared so much about my reputation.

And it was about reputation, not relationship with my kids. And I just had to then dig more into that. And I realized that there were so many lies that I was believing about myself, that I'm a failure. I'm a mistake.

I'm not enough. And just on and on and on it went. And I was living in those lies and letting those lies be the labels that I wore, and that I led with and parented from.

Yeah. Crystal, it's so refreshing to hear such vulnerable expression of what we go through as parents. And I guess one of the questions I'd have for the mom listening, I'm trying to think of where she's at right now. And she hasn't been able to make the leap yet. You know, she recognizes the load. She feels that burden, like what it was for you to lay your head on the pillow and just go after yourself for not being the perfect mom. How would you encourage somebody who's still there at point A to get to point B?

I mean, there's no formula to do that. It's a recognition of I'm doing this out of my own strength, all the things that you're saying. If that mom was sitting right where I'm at, what would you say to her to stop and look at this differently? How do you disengage in that behavior that you have and re-engage with the Lord and do it better? First off, I would say just over the next 24 hours, pay attention to the narrative, the words that you say about yourself and the words that you allow in your head.

Are you constantly going to places that aren't true? What does God actually say about you in His word? You are redeemed. You are chosen. You are loved. You are forgiven.

You are beautiful. When He looks at you as a child of God, He sees Jesus. You're covered in the blood. And so if you're constantly going around saying, I'm a failure, I'm a mistake, everything that I do is just a disappointment to everyone in my life, and you're just beating yourself up as a mom, you're living in lies. Crystal, I really want to get into some practical help for those moms who are going, okay, this is me. I'm living this now.

What do I do? And in your book, you mentioned four important choices in parenting. The first one being lean in and love. I think you're alluding to that a couple of times here that you got to listen. Describe more fully what lean in and love looks like.

Yes. And it's interesting because the subtitle of the book is The No Fail Guide to Launching Your Kids. And people are like, well, how can you, you know, really say that the no fail guide? But it's because you can't fail if you're faithful, because failure is not dependent upon your child's choices or behaviors. It's about you walking with them. And so leaning in and loving them.

It's this posture of letting God's love flow through you. And I truly believe that as parents, we have this desire to love our kids. But until we have that wellspring of love, of understanding how much we're loved by God, we can't wholeheartedly love our kids. And so we've got to get this right inside for us, before we can really pour out God's love to our kids. Yeah. Leaning in love is a great concept.

Let me play the provocateur here. There's going to be some parents that are gonna say, yeah, that's all good. Love is good. But discipline is important, too. They need to know the boundaries. And how do you relate to that parent that may be leaning a little strongly in that direction? Boundaries are good. You need to teach your kids discipline.

That's all true. But how do you do that? Leaning in and loving them? Well, first off, I would say what is that desire for boundaries? Where's that coming from?

What is the root of that? And is it about your own need to control? Is there fear?

That's a great first question. Is there fear or pride or selfishness? A lot of times at the root of us feeling like we want to discipline our kids. It's that need to control. It's our own fear of what the future is going to look like. It's our own pride of what other people think about our parenting. Or it's our own selfishness, because we just want our life to be easier. And so if we set these boundaries, it's going to make our life easier. So really getting to the root of is that out of love for our kids?

Or is it out of our own dysfunctional junk that we need to deal with? Those are good questions. But on that lean in and love, you had an experience where I think you asked your kids a very brave question as a parent. What did you ask them? How did they respond?

Yes. So we try to just have this open door policy with our kids, especially as we've had this shift. And so letting them come to us and tell us things where we're being hypocritical, which is really hard as a parent. But one time we were on a trip, it was a few years ago, and we just asked because, you know, road trips are great for having family conversations. Everybody has to be a part of the conversation because they're in the car. And so we just asked them, what do I do as a parent that makes you feel loved?

And what do I do as a parent that makes you feel unloved? And it was fascinating the responses, but so much of it dealt with it. We didn't listen well, you know, that we would just kind of jump into preaching a sermon or just telling them what they should do, telling them what they should know, or that we just weren't taking enough time with them. It's quality and quantity time. And just really looking into their eyes and letting them know, I care about you. I value what you have to say. And it's not just about my own agenda for you. There was a time your child was being disrespectful.

I don't know which one you do. And they knew the consequences for their actions. What happened and how did you manage that one? Well, there's been many times that our children have been disrespectful. Just put that out there.

This one sticks out. I didn't write a parenting book because I have it all figured out. Trust me. But one of the times it was just, there had been this thing that I told our child, you know, if you do this, there's going to be this consequence. And the child had done it. And so I'd gone back to them and I'd said, you know, okay, there's this consequence. And then there was just this thing in my heart over the next day that I felt like God wanted me to go back and actually take away that consequence and say, I'm going to let you do this thing that they had wanted to do that I'd taken away.

And when I went to them and said that, my child just looked at me and they said, what? That's grace. And it was just that recognition of, you know, I'm not saying, I feel like choices have consequences, but every once in a while, if the Holy Spirit is just prompting you sometimes for our child to see us extend grace to them. And that opened up the door for just a conversation about how much grace God has poured on us that we don't deserve. And so using those opportunities as just the opening of a door to a conversation to point our kids to the Lord. I think that that's ultimately what we want to do is just pointing them to Jesus in our everydayness of life. You know, I think we, it's really profound what you're saying, because I think we miss that important teaching and to teach our children about God's grace. We lean into the rules and, you know, tell them what God expects of us and those things, but we don't make it. I'm being general here, but I don't think we do enough to teach about God's grace. And that's a great example of how your kids caught that certainly your one child.

Okay. So we lean in and love. That's one of the four choices we as parents make the next is to listen well.

I love this one because I'm terrible at it. I'm usually talking over my kids. So how do we stop and truly listen?

Well, so we come with this attitude of I care about you and I want to lean in and just express love to you and then stop and ask them questions. So often when something has happened, I will jump to conclusions or project my own beliefs on what has happened. Whether you get an email from school or a call from school or a friend tells you something your child did or another child tells you something your child did. And I'll just go into, Oh my goodness, I can't believe they did that.

And we just need to get this taken care of. But to lean in and love and to listen well means that take a breath and ask them questions first. And so one of the things that I'll often do with my kids is say, can you tell me what happened in this situation?

Or I got this email today from school. Can you explain what happened? Giving them the opportunity to explain it to me first versus me just jumping into, I cannot believe that you did that. And so often that will open up the door to a conversation that we never would have had if I had just jumped on them and gone to, okay, well, here's the consequence. And I challenge parents to recognize this. Literally this morning, Jean was telling me Troy and I are going to do a little weekend road trip.

And she said, Now, when you ask Troy a question, if he's sitting silently, don't fill it in for him. I mean, so I'm totally guilty of that. I, you know, I'm trying to do better.

The third one is the choice to lead with humility. This can be really hard for parents too. But I totally agree with this crystal. This is so important. I think our kids need to see that we're not perfect.

Yes. And I think it's important that they recognize how much we need Jesus and that without him, we're not able to do life. And so leading with humility involves sometimes going back to our kids and asking for forgiveness, which is really hard to do. But I just want to say, let's make this a practice that is normal in our home because we are going to fail. We are going to mess up. We are going to make mistakes. And so for us to go back to our kids when we've responded out of anger, or when we haven't handled a situation well, we haven't listened, we've shut them down to go back and say, you know, yesterday when that happened, I just didn't respond to you.

Well, would you please forgive me? I'm really working on this in my life. And I think it also really just opens up the door for our kids to then come to us and share when they're struggling and for our kids to see how we need Jesus.

It's going to point them to look to Jesus when they're going through hard times too. And that's the best parenting you can do. Really. The fourth one is letting go of your child. What? What?

Crystal, are you crazy? Obviously, it's age appropriate. You don't let a three year old go. But you know, talk to that issue of letting go. If you're a mom and dad of young children, you're saying what are you talking about? If you're a mom and dad of 15, 16, 17 year olds, you know exactly what we're talking about.

How do you let go? Letting go, I really feel like it starts in your own heart. It's that those hands open to resting in God's plan for our children and trusting Him with our kids. So it starts with that. But then I think let's not wait until our kids are 15, 16, 17 to start thinking, oh yeah, they are going to leave the nest someday. As they're younger, as they show, like you said, age appropriate, let's give them opportunities to practice being adults. And one of the things about that is then they're going to make some mistakes. And guess what?

Then we can be there to kind of walk with them through those mistakes. And so not too long ago, one of my kids, they really wanted to buy this new set of earbuds. And they wanted these really expensive set of earbuds. And I was like, okay. And they had found them off of one of those sites that is not super reputable.

And I asked them a few questions and they plunked down a lot of money on these earbuds that did not work. And it was such a good opportunity for us to just, you know, talk about this. And, you know, I said, can you go back and is there anything you can do to get your money back?

No. But they said, I learned a lot from this, you know, so we were able to have that conversation. And so often, it opens up just those conversations when we allow them to little bit by little bit, we are letting them go, we're raising them to be adults, not kids. And I think it's really important also to recognize that are we setting rules and boundaries for our kids just because it's, we want to keep them safe. And I think so often that we are not setting them up for success in life, if we make all the decisions for them, especially as they get older, but raising them to learn to seek the Lord themselves, and to make some decisions themselves so that they get in that habit and that practice of learning wise decision making. When you tie this all up in a neat bow, all the things that you've learned, and again, I so appreciate your forthrightness and your vulnerability in this, because we all need to learn from it. And we all need to be more honest, I think, as parents and how we're doing, speak again to that mom or dad listening who say, Okay, I have done everything out of fear, what I'm hearing you say is me, it's what I've done.

What can they do today, again, to move toward a healthier approach, kind of putting all four of these together. I would just encourage any parent who is listening who is feeling that weight of exhaustion, that stress of wanting to do everything right. And you don't live like that anymore to recognize you are so loved by your Heavenly Father. Start with camping in His love. You can't love your kids well, if you don't believe that you're loved yourself. And so going back to the Word of God and really looking at what does He say about you, and just really, really, really letting that soak in to your soul. And then you can let yourself be a conduit to your kids. And you have so much more rest, because when you know how much you're loved by God, it doesn't matter what other people think about your parenting, it doesn't matter. Honestly, at the end of the day, the choices and behaviors of your kids, that's not the biggest thing. Knowing how much you're loved by God and being able to walk in that love with your kids.

I truly believe that's what's going to change their lives profoundly. You know, that is so good. And I'm thinking of the Lord saying, you know, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. You sure, Lord, even in parenting? Yes, even in parenting, that yoke can be far lighter than the way we're making it. And I think that's what you're expressing. God's way is a more perfect way. And it's rooted in love. And even if in that you're saying, wait a minute, Jim, I'd say check your heart, start digging like Crystal has suggested to say what's motivating you to respond in certain ways. Crystal, this is great material.

I've been really looking forward to talking with you because this is a book that I have thought and talked about with other people for two years, I just didn't know you were going to be writing it. And the content is outstanding. And I think this goes right to the core of fixing so many parenting issues that we have today, so that our kids can be healthier and really understand God's love than feeling the love of God and living than feeling the love of God and living that out and loving your neighbor. Right.

That's what it's for. Thanks for being with us. Thanks so much for having me. And I'll remind our listeners that Focus on the Family is here to help you with any challenges you may be facing in your family. We've got a free assessment on our website. You can learn about the seven traits of effective parenting when you go there.

It's a great tool to help you gauge your strengths and maybe some areas for growth in your parenting. And one thing too, we want you to get this book. So if you can make a gift of any amount, if you could become a monthly giver and help do ministry together to help other families join us and for gift of any amount, we'll send you a copy of Crystal's book as our way of saying thank you.

And I say this often, if you can't afford it, that's okay. We want you to have this. I believe in this book. I've been looking for this book like I've alluded to for years and Crystal's written it. I believe in the content.

I believe in the love of God. If you can't afford it, just get in touch with us. We'll get it out to you and we're going to trust that others will take care of the expense of that.

That's what ministry is all about. So let's get this in your hands and let's get you on to a healthier parenting journey. And to donate and get your copy of Crystal's book or to take that free parenting assessment, swing by the episode notes. We've got all the details and links right there for you. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Have fun for your kids just a click away. And now Adventures in Odyssey. The Adventures in Odyssey Club, where your eight to 12 year old can find trusted faith building entertainment in a safe online club. It features almost every episode ever plus special monthly club only episodes and content and a Focus on the Family Clubhouse magazine subscription. Sign up today. Just go to AIOclub.org slash radio.